The Best Awards Show Moments Are the Ones That Can't Be Planned

Adele would probably prefer to forget her flub—but what else are you going to remember from the Grammys?

When the 59th annual Grammy Awards came to an end, Adele walked away with five trophies, including Song of the Year, Album of the Year, and Record of the Year. But the Adele moment worth remembering is the one she’d prefer you forget: The botched George Michael tribute that she interrupted, with a curse and an apology, to start all over again.

Of course, there’s something to be said for a consummate professional who knocks a performance out of the park. (We’ll be talking about that Beyonce chair dip for a loooooong time.) But in an evening of overproduced, over-rehearsed, and ultimately forgettable performances by artists like Ed Sheeran, Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood, and Katy Perry, it was Adele who stood out.

You could tell Adele’s George Michael tribute was going off the rails almost immediately. She was off-key and atonal, and it would probably have been easier to muddle through. Instead, Adele stopped, cursed, and asked if she could start again. And while the second take was much better, it was the impulse—the insistence that she could, and should, do better—that will ultimately stick.

To her credit, it also honored the artist it claimed to be honoring. When Adele restarted the song, she offered an explanation: "I’m sorry. I can’t mess it up for him." Later in the show, when accepted Song of the Year, she apologized again, and added, "I just really love him." In a perfect world, you nail your tribute the first time—but Adele’s reaction was the next best thing. As my colleague Rohan wrote, the flub "brought a human moment to a show that often lacks personality."

And for this largely boring evening, that might have been enough. But when you look beyond the relatively narrow lens of Grammys tribute performances, there’s a bigger takeaway: The best awards show moments are the unplanned ones. You can see it best in the counter-example. All of Grammys host James Corden’s (characteristically self-deprecating) bits hinged on being surprised and embarrassed: Falling into a hole as he marched down the stairs to launch into his opening monologue, or being shocked to discover his dad was hooking up with Heidi Klum and mom was hooking up with Nick Jonas, or realizing he was introducing the President of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences instead of Kanye West.

The problem with these bits is that they’re only funny if they convincingly feel spontaneous—which is impossible, because we all know they’ve been exhaustively workshopped and rehearsed. It’s no accident that the most memorable moment in Corden’s roster of gags was totally unplanned. In a riff on his popular Late Late Show segment "Carpool Karaoke," Corden invited a slew of famous artists to perform "Sweet Caroline." It was dreadful—yet another transparent attempt to replicate Ellen’s viral Oscars selfie, which is Patient Zero in the non-spontaneous "spontaneous" awards show moment. And then Blue Ivy wandered over in her Prince outfit to see what was going on, and singlehandedly saved Corden’s listless gag:

Right now, if you asked me to recap the highlights of the bloated, nearly four-hour show I just finished watching, almost everything I mentioned would be utterly unscripted. Corden, thinking quickly on his feet, by taking his pants off in response to Twenty One Pilots’ dumb pantsless speech. Q-Tip yelling "Resist! Resist! Resist! Resist!" into the mic. Adele dedicating her Album of the Year award to Beyonce, whom everyone—including Adele—knew deserved it more.

This is nothing new, of course. Every awards show comes with reminders that the happy accidents are the moments worth watching for. A fairly sleepy year at the Golden Globes was livened up by the moment when the camera happened to cut to Christian Slater in the midst of an unintentionally oddball acceptance speech by Tom Hiddleston:

You probably remember that quizzical expression, because it instantly went viral—the definition of a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that couldn’t possibly be planned. Who knew Hiddleston would win for The Night Manager? Who knew he would give such an off-key speech? And who knew that a cameraperson would cut to Christian Slater, of all people, whose face just happened to be channeling the thoughts of every person in America?

No one! But it happened. And that’s why awards shows are still worth watching.